Fun for the whole family! Join us tonight, 6-9 pm, for a tasting of four stellar Italian wines in 1 liter bottles, each 17 bucks a pop, appropriately timed for a Memorial day weekend full of barbecues and beach days! Our friend Kat from Domenico Valentino will be pouring her first tasting at Dandy, and we’ll have cheese from ED!

Orsolani Erbaluce di Caluso, Piemonte 2010 The life of the party! Apricot and peachy notes give way to a crisp, minerally finish in this super refreshing white that everyone can enjoy. $17

Gaspare Vinci Grillo, Sicilia 2010 Gaspare Vinci is known for producing incredibly aromatic wines from native Sicilian grapes. Hailing from a sunny, seaside vineyard in Southern Italy, this white is soft and supple, with a touch of spice and a lingering finish. $17

Gaspare Vinci Nerello Mascalese, Sicila 2009 Powerful red fruit on the nose hints at the concentrated, lush juice in the glass. This Nerello is a great match for grilled meat, which we hope is plentiful this weekend! $17

Amici di Endrizzi Teroldego, Trentino 2010 Endrizzi’s Teroldego is a darker, earthier style red with a charming freshness characteristic of the wines from the colder, mountainous regions of Northern Italy. $17

STAFF PICKS

It’s quality, not quantity.

xoxo

New Wine Alert! 

Kaltern Caldaro Alto Bianco 2011 Vigneti Delle Dolomiti - aka ALTO BIANCO
Summer in a bottle.  We love the zingy brightness of this wine!  It’ll snap the thirst right out of you on a hot day… “From 400+ meters elevation in the Italian Alps comes this lively blend of historic grape varieties.  Wonderfully aromatic, with a full palate of developed ripe fruit flavors and a finish as clean and crisp as the mountain air.”  $16

New Wine Alert!  Two new reds for 11 bucks a pop.

Domaine Puech Cocut 2011 Pinot Noir Vin Pays D’Oc - An old friend is back again.  We skipped a vintage or 2, but the 2011 Puech Cocut is fresh and focused Pinot Noir for such a great price!  Domaine Puech Cocut is located in the Languedoc area on the sunny slopes of the Mediterranean Sea.  The grapes are estate grown.  $11

Baglio Del Sole 2009 Nero D’Avola Sicilia - A great value from Sicily!  100% Nero d’Avola with good body and spicy but soft tannins.  $11

Exciting News! CHANNING DAUGHTERS AT DANDY!

Meg took a trip to the winery a weekend or 2 ago and fell in love with so many of their wines, and today we got 3 of them. Meg will fill you in on her trip sometime soon, and we may get more of these local gems later on, but in the meantime, here is some info on what we’ve got!

L’Enfant Sauvage Chardonnay $36
L’Enfant Sauvage is made from 100% Chardonnay grapes hand-harvested from our Brick Kiln and Sculpture Garden vineyards here in Bridgehampton. The grapes are gently whole cluster-pressed, the juice settled overnight and racked into new French and Slovenian oak barrels and filled to the top. The ambient/wild/spontaneous (whatever you want to call them) yeast kick in and the wine ferments. The secondary malo-lactic fermentation also happens spontaneously and we leave the wine on its lees until blending and bottling. In the past L’Enfant has spent 13-14 months in oak….beginning with the 2008 and now again with the 2009 vintage the wine spends 18 months in barrel. This way it has a chance to live through two winters in barrel and as the Burgundians’ say “then able to stand on its own two feet”. So, how is the wine? Delicious, rich, elegant, satisfying, juicy and complex! Our 2009 L’Enfant Sauvage is a beautiful clear gold color and possesses clean, youthful flavors and aromas of golden apples, lemon curd, pears, just-baked brioche, pineapple, brown baking spices and salty minerals. The wine is dry, full bodied, has balanced acidity and alcohol…and a long, complex, persistent finish. The aromas and flavors are fairly intense and long-lasting yet there is restraint, elegance and finesse balancing the rich, barrel-fermented style. The wine is just plain yummy and easily competes with the big names from California and Burgundy. One of the very rewarding aspects of L’Enfant is how approachable it is in its youth yet it really is a wine meant for 5-10 years of aging in bottle. It is thrilling to see the wine develop beautifully and still offer remarkable freshness, aliveness and potential for further development at six or eight or ten years of age. As always L’Enfant is a great match for lobster, scallops, truffles, roast chicken, goose, salmon, artic char and mushroom dishes. On April 26, 2011 a mere 177 cases were bottled by gravity. -The Winery

2011 Rosato di Refosco -Home Farm Vineyard $21
Wonderfully surprising rosato…Classic pink color, sweet red and black fruit character, pronounced aromatics…rich, robust, exuberant and most importantly fun! Crisp, balanced rosato…alpine wild strawberries (fraise des bois), ripe blackberries, black raspberries and other bramble fruit…also floral, citrus and mineral notes…lengthy finish. Match with prosciutto and melon, fricos, fish salads or tacos, pastas, porchetta and poultry. 275 cases made. All eight of the Rosati were made from hand-harvested fruit that was whole cluster-pressed and fermented in stainless steel tanks. All of the Rosati are dry, balanced and delicious and the color comes only from the 3-4 hours in the press. This is red fruit selected specially for pink wine production that is processed like we were making white wine. -The Winery

2010 Blaufränkisch - Sylvanus Vineyard $29
Over the years this variety has proven its affinity with our climate and we love to use it both as a blending grape and as a varietal bottling. Our 2010 Sylvanus Vineyard Blaufränkisch is comprised of 80% Blaufränkisch and 20% Dornfelder. We feel Dornfelder is a great match as a blending grape with its darker color, and briary, bramble and spice fruit character. The 2010 wine has a dark ruby-red colored rim with purple inflections and a translucent core. The aromas and flavors are full of lilacs, iris’, raspberries, black raspberries, plums, boysenberries, violets, brown spice and black pepper. This is a dry, supple, sexy wine with Burgundian texture and great concentration. These Blaufränkisch grapes were simply picked, placed in bins and the wine completed fermentation with ambient yeast. The alcohol is on the light side of moderate at only 11.6%, the acids juicy and balanced, the tannins are present but soft, and the wine offers a great deal of pleasure and a long delicious finish. All the fruit was hand-picked from our Sylvanus vineyard here in Bridgehampton on the South Fork, de-stemmed, crushed by foot and punched down by hand in small one ton bins. The wine spent 16 months in five hogsheads and three puncheons of old French and Slovenian oak. The wine was bottled by gravity without fining or filtration on February 14th, 2012. Our 2010 Blaufränkisch Sylvanus Vineyard is a great match with venison, pork roasts, meatballs, duck, game birds, veal chops, hard mountain and washed rind cheeses as well as earthy grain and squash based dishes. This wine would also be a great choice for richer fish preparations. 328 cases produced -The Winery

New Wine Alert!  Here are some new bottles that arrived this week…

Teutonic Wine Company 2011 Riesling Willamette Valley:  A super small-production winery making high-quality wines in the style of Germany and Alsace.  Lower alcohol (9.5%), higher elegance.  Great with food!  $25

Casa d’Ambra Ischia Bianco:  This savory white from a small island in the bay of Naples tastes like the sea air that blows on the vineyard. $17

Domaine de la Pauline 2010 Sancerre:  A Sancerre lover’s dream.  Lemons, limes, wild thyme, a kiss of jalepeno… your jowls will tingle from the acidity.  Tang AND body.  $25

Chateau des Tours Brouilly 2010:  Sometimes a half bottle is all you need, and this one is a bright and beautiful Beaujolais perfect for chilling and chillin’… $12.50

Altes Herencia 2011 Garnacha Negra:  You might think we’re Garnacha-crazy around here, but Spain has so many great values in that category, and this is our newest favorite for $13.  So well-balanced and quaffable, it’s a good idea to stock up on this one.

Kermit Lynch Selections 2009 Cotes du Rhone:  Long-term relationships with vineyards and winemakers in France gives Kermit a great opportunity to select the best of the best… this Cotes du Rhone is one of his selections.  Blackberries and plum fruit.  $16